One of the interesting things about skills and experience is that it’s usually most visible to the people you are currently working with.
People who work with you are going to be more aware of your skills and experience than people who don’t know you and can only get second hand knowledge about it ie. by reading your resume, by interviewing you, by doing references with people who’ve worked with you. At the end of the day they will have to make assumptions about you and your work since they didn’t actually witness it firsthand.
Sometimes the hardest part about interviewing and job searching is convincing a new employer who doesn’t know you that you’re the best person for the job or even that you are someone who they should interview.
Resumes often (usually?) get speed-read by hiring managers who might spend a few seconds glancing and flipping through your resume to look for certain words, phrases, technologies, accomplishments, certifications, etc to stick out. The reality is that many times, hiring managers look for reasons not to interview you and to not hire you, just to weed the list down and get to a short list.
If you work in a large company – or least a company that offers opportunities to move to a different job, role, division, department, etc – you can often find it easier to conduct a job search by walking down the hall and meeting with and speaking with hiring managers in other parts of the company.
This assumes of course that you have a good name within the company.
I remember at the first company I worked with – a large company with several thousand staff – it was fairly common for people to stay with the company for a number of years and move from one department or division to another. It offered a number of opportunities for people to move to different roles rather than having to leave the company and find such an opportunity with another company.
I noticed that people often desired to move to a different division in the company and when a job became available, were moved to a new area that they were interested in. Often, the person’s manager accommodated staff and helped them transition from one area to another to avoid losing this person to a rival company.
From a personal perspective, I’d thought about moving from the company’s marketing department into their sales department so when they posted a job for a new sales person I figured I’d apply and give it a shot. I was working closely with this particular sales department as it was so I also went to speak with the sales manager directly to let him know I was interested to work in their group and asked them what I’d need to do to be considered.
As it turns out, he let me know he was (happily) surprised that I was interested to work in his group but that they had already identified a more experienced person in another group (another area of marketing) that they were most likely going to hire. So even though they had posted the job internally, they had already lined someone up for it which was unfortunate for me.
Still, I let them know my intentions and it seemed that their response was a positive one. They were well aware of my work since it benefited their group directly so I had already built up a pretty good name.
I ended up staying in my marketing job for another year before moving back home again so I never did get to pursue a sales role with the company but I think had the chance arisen, I’d have had a pretty good shot based on my track record within the company.
